Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's just on midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question or comment received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. 

The picture?  I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me and the teachers who influenced them in turn. Last week's honoree, Violet Firth Evans aka Dion Fortune, had the great advantage of coming of age when the British occult community was close to its apogee, and she had plenty of teachers. Some of them, such as Moina Mathers, have already appeared here; some of them, such as Maiya Tranchell Hayes, apparently didn't leave any photographs behind -- but there are several others, and this is one of them: Frederick Bligh Bond, who was the official church archeologist at the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey between the two world wars, and discovered a whole series of lost features by digs that just happened to go to the right place. Then it turned out that there was no "just happened" about it; he was using spiritualistic methods to talk to the spirits of long-dead monks, who told him where to dig. The church threw a fit and dismissed him, but he went on to publish several volumes about his experiences, at least one of which can be downloaded for free (here). Dion Fortune studied with him for a while and also did trance work with him; her connection with Glastonbury continued to the end of her life, and in fact she's buried there.

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here. 

 

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

Re: Post on Narcissism and MOE Tree of Life Visualizations

[jprussell]

You're welcome and thank you for the thoughts!

As someone who has worked as a scrum master, your characterization strikes me as reasonable! And yes, that's something that TLP talks about that didn't make it into my condensation: one reason narcissism is so corrosive is that it can become a self-reinforcing vicious cycle where you don't connect with people because you're too focused on your own identity, then you want to connect but suspect that they're just as fake and insecure as you, so you reject their attempts, which makes you more isolated and focused on your identity, and so on. I think a focus on "but what am I/are they actually doing?" is so important.

Re: Post on Narcissism and MOE Tree of Life Visualizations

[(Anonymous)]

What is a scrum master?

—Princess Cutekitten

Re: Post on Narcissism and MOE Tree of Life Visualizations

[jprussell]

A flavor of project manager found mostly in the world of software. Basically, some folks took a look at what small teams made up of folks with a mix of skill sets could do when highly motivated and self-directing (like a software startup) and then asked "how can we try to systematize this to fake it with teams inside a big corporation to get them to be more productive?"

At its best, folks deal with less red tape or hassle about how the project is run and spend more time focusing on getting the work done. At its worst, you have just as much red tape/hassle, but now it's being sold to you as this great alternative that you're expected to pretend to be excited about. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out which end of the spectrum is more commonly seen.